Thorn Wilde

I get that, but I think this will have a detrimental effect on author exposure (I know of several authors on the site other than myself who feel like they're getting fewer reads than they used to already and I can't see this change helping), and surely the forums are for registered users and not guests in the first place, but I suppose it's not up to any of us. The community is absolutely important, and part of what many of us enjoy so much about GA, but it shouldn't be at expense of the stories and authors, should it?

I think it was better as it was. People are less likely to click through to see more than to just click whatever's right there. This way, new chapters may only be visible on the forum front page for half an hour when lots of people are posting. This is a site for stories, isn't it? Doesn't seem to make much sense to make the stories less visible. Edited to add: With how long the club forums thing is now, there's plenty of space in the side bar for a longer story updates list. If anything, you could make it longer.

You should be!

I really enjoyed the way you described Ronnie's powers growing and manifesting. The energy travelling along tendrils. It was a very cool visual, really brought the scene to life. Good job!

This is perfectly true, but the potential ambiguity of English is never made better by poor grammar either.

You say you lean toward clarity, but that wasn't clear at all. Like I said, you put three people in the sentence. Raven, she, and John. Now, 'Raven and John have been best friends since third grade' is perfectly fine. It was the 'since meeting' part that made the sentence not make sense. As for how you write vs how you speak, in dialogue I'm all for writing like you talk. But in the prose itself, you really should follow basic rules of grammar and punctuation, unless you have a very good and compelling reason not to that furthers your narrative artistically (Cloud Atlas, A Clockwork Orange, and Flowers for Algernon are examples of titles that purposefully did this, and to great effect). Edited to add: I believe in writing the story you want to write, the way you want to write it, and I'm not one to enforce hard rules about how to tell a story. But it should be told in a way that the readers can understand, and that's why we have spelling, grammar, and punctuation rules and conventions; so that we can communicate our message to people in a way that they understand. That's the whole purpose of language.

Probably not. What punctuation rules there are are much younger than the language itself.

That's not grammatically correct. First of all, you've changed the tense from past to present, by using 'have' rather than 'had'. Also, 'Raven' is the object of the first half, with 'she and John' being the implied subjects of both halves, so you've put three people in that sentence rather than two. EDIT: It would in theory be understandable if you wrote 'John and she' rather than 'she and John', but it's still ambiguous.

Oh, that's an excellent museum! Been there several times.

Now that is a very bad sentence. It's true that a lot of 'had's can (and should) be eliminated by simply changing the sentence structure. In the case of the sentence above, I'd cut half of it and just write, 'John and Raven had met in the third grade and become instant besties,' for instance. It can also be a good idea to restructure or rephrase sentences with 'was' in them. A good way to make things more interesting. Either way, though, the key is variety. If every sentence in a paragraph is 'subject, verb, object', things get boring fast, for instance. While punctuation definitely counts, punctuation rules in English are actually extremely complex, convoluted, and inconsistent, especially where commas are concerned. There are vast varieties of styles that use commas differently (Oxford comma or not is only one of many points where people wildly disagree) and no hardcore rules for them. You can ask three different editors who are equally experienced, educated, and knowledgeable and get three completely different answers about comma placement.

Congrats on clearing the mod queue! And this is getting very exciting. Hellfire, huh? Interesting... Also, I loved your descriptions of the museum. Detailed enough to set the scene nicely, but not so much you lose focus on the story. Nicely done!

What a sweet and beautiful poem! I'm glad you two had a nice time.

I mean, hands-free orgasm is a real thing, but it has less to do with your lover's skill than with, well, physiology. Some can, some can't. Either way, I do think this version was an improvement. You're doing a great job reworking this.

Good chapter! You do a great job of expressing the frustration Ronnie feels, I think. Keep it up!

Against Me! - True Trans Soul Rebel

Ooh, exciting! Can't wait to see what more you two create together.

Sometimes 'had' is necessary; past perfect is often needed when writing a story in past tense, and then 'had' is essential. That's just good grammar.

Sounds really tasty. Definitely need to try making it...

Hugs for you both. Hope tomorrow is a better day.

This poem hit me hard. Raw poetry is right. Makes me think of the people I’ve lost. Loss, love... is the pain worth it for the memories? I think so, most of the time... Thank you for sharing these beautiful words with us, tim.

Been listening to this album by Voltaire on repeat for the past couple of days. Cracks me up so much! For my fellow nerds (contains swearing). Fair warning if you go on to listen to the rest of the album: These are the least offensive songs on it. And if you're sensitive, DO NOT listen to The Trouble with Tribbles or Cantina.

Maya is such a dick. In a good way. Lol! Ronnie might have noticed how uncomfortable his fanboying made Taran, though. Kind of oblivious, isn't he? In more ways than one.

I like Mari! Wouldn't mind seeing more of her.

Thank you! I really appreciate that. Thanks for giving my work a chance, and I'm really happy you're enjoying it.

It's horrific. No other word to describe it. And millions upon millions of animals, some members of vulnerable species, are dead or at great risk. Just awful.